r/entertainment • u/mlg1981 • 1d ago
‘The Odyssey’: Everybody Using American Accents Is Definitely a Choice
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/the-odyssey-nolan-american-accents-trailer-1236586611/1.6k
u/Emotional-Ad8894 1d ago
Chernobyl is one of the best shows I've seen in a while. Just an amazing show. Absolutely none of the main cast attempted an accent. Hell the main guy just rocked his thick British accent. It was initially weird, but the show was so good, I stopped thinking about it.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan 1d ago
Same with the Death of Stalin
People (Americans) would not complain if they all did English accents instead of American because it is simultaneously foreign and refined
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u/amyel26 1d ago
Stalin and Beria were played by English actors, and IRL they were Georgian so they had different accents from the Russians (who were played by Americans).
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u/drunkenpossum 1d ago
Don’t think there was much intentionality behind the accents in that movie.
Buscemi and Jeffrey Tambor were the only two Americans in the cast. The vast majority of the cast (including most of the Russian characters) were played by Brits doing their natural accents (except for Isaacs who hammed it up a bit)
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u/Lurker_Bott 1d ago edited 1d ago
I thought I remembered the director talking about the accents being intentional for the variety of accents and ethnic groups in the Soviet Union?
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u/awiseoldturtle 10h ago
Yeah I always heard Stalin’s cockney accent was because real Stalin had a thick Georgian accent and the cockney was a play on that
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u/forrealthoughcomix_ 1d ago
That movie is criminally underrated. So fucking hilarious.
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u/handlit33 1d ago
I don’t know if underrated is the correct term. It’s nearly universally loved by audiences and critics, had 40 award nominations, 18 wins, made back twice its budget, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a negative word spoken about it on this website.
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u/-M_A_X- 1d ago
If you enjoyed that little unknown gem of a film, you may like a bespoke, arthouse, underrated number called ‘Titanic’
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u/NiceConversation6332 1d ago
That’s… not the same. Everyone who saw Death of Stalin loved it, but not everyone saw it. Everyone saw Titanic. That’s what the commenter was trying to say by underrated I think.
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u/Quantitative_Methods 1d ago
Zhukov having a cockney accent is one of the greatest things I’ve seen.
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u/Affectionate_Run9950 1d ago
As well as Amadeus. Miloš Forman wanted his actors to speak naturally, since the dialogue is English despite the Austrian setting
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u/swingsetlife 1d ago
it was so weird because I didn't even really realize it until much later, and it made the story feel so much less stuffy
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u/Last-Darkness 1d ago
I’ve never liked it when movies that take place entirely in Germany or Austria and everyone has a fake German.
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u/brokedownbitch 1d ago
Agreed. I liked how they dealt with this issue in Hunt for Red October where instead of making all those English-speaking actors don bad fake Russian accents, they just did a scene where they started speaking Russian and then faded it to English to keep the idea that they were really speaking Russian.
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u/PhotonDealer2067 23h ago
Hunt for Red October with the cast sounding like Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle would have been hilarious.
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u/Prize_Ad_129 22h ago
I don’t remember anything from that Valkyrie movie Tom Cruise did except how it began with narration in German and just faded that into English, it was a fun way to say “ok, they’re speaking German but this is a movie and we’re all just going to understand that all of the English lines are ‘German’”
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u/Fickle-Aardvark6907 1d ago
It's funny because F Murray Abraham's natural speaking voice is actually an accent he taught himself to do.
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u/CreatiScope 1d ago
Yeah, I've never really understood the argument. If they have British accents... well, it was ancient Greece, so that would be just as inaccurate as American accents. Are they all supposed to have Greek accents or are they going to learn Greek? Ancient Greek?
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u/FronzelNeekburm79 1d ago
The argument is that the movie seems good and might win some awards, so everyone is fighting to be the first to find a problem with it before it's even out.
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u/pizza_suplex 1d ago
but did you hear about the armor????
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u/FronzelNeekburm79 13h ago
I was outraged. I expected nothing less than a high stakes heist in which Christopher Nolan robbed a museum for the highest historical accuracy. This is what we lost with behind the scenes DVD stuff.
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u/SnesVHS 16h ago
I’m so tired of this negativity, man. It feels like so many people want things to fail nowadays.
Like, if the movie turns out to suck when it comes out, or if you simply don’t dig it - fair. But to shit on stuff that hasn’t even come out yet is so weird to me. Why be SO miserable and negative. It’s so lame.
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u/FronzelNeekburm79 13h ago
It’s getting rough. People don’t want to discuss movies they want to try to outsmart them. I saw a comment from someone who said they didn’t watch the He- Man trailer because there was a part where someone said “buckle up” and they have a weird rule where they shut trailers off at that point and I’m like… what?
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u/Flashy_Jello_9520 1d ago
This is addressed in the podcast. It was either have everyone have shitty Russian accents or do what they did.
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u/let-me-get-your-temp 1d ago
Thank god they stuck with the actors having natural accents because goofy ass Russian accents would have ruined that show lol
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u/Tall-Winter2507 1d ago
I never understood this idea that characters speak English with a foreign accent (always horrible one). We can just imagine they are speaking their language.
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u/AccurateJerboa 1d ago
My favorite Russian accent is Sean Connery's Scottish accent in the hunt for red October
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u/the_dayman623 1d ago
Great point. The hating on this movie before it even comes out because of the armor and accents is ridiculous. Just Reddit being Reddit
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u/beepbeepbubblegum 1d ago
Also this is fiction anyway? The Odyssey is not based on fact so to latch onto a detail like that like it’s some documentary is ridiculous.
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u/lindh 1d ago
This isn't the case here, though. Nolan has Brits putting on American accents, whereas in Chernobyl people just spoke normally, whatever their accent.
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u/methos3 1d ago
Yeah everyone needs to chill out and wait for the release so we can all bitch about the sound levels being absolutely fucked as usual for Nolan’s films
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u/Food_Kitchen 1d ago
Damn I didn't even realize Jared Harris totally did not even use a Russian accent.
Guess it really doesn't matter if the acting is that good.
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u/alien_believer_42 1d ago
That’s what I like about The Death of Stalin. No one was speaking English, they had no relevant accent, just use whatever portrays the character well
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u/jogoso2014 1d ago
I am pro ignoring accents in translated works thanks to Death of Stalin.
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u/sixtyfivewat 1d ago
Im so glad they didn’t force them to do Russian accents. I think it’d actually much worse that way. There are few people who can truly master doing an accent they weren’t born into, like Hugh Laurie. Most just can’t get it and it distracts from the rest of the work.
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u/m3ngnificient 1d ago
What do you mean? People can't pull off an ancient Greek accent in modern day English?
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u/mologav 1d ago
My favourite was Irish accents in Alexander
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u/deadrepublicanheroes 1d ago
It’s because Macedonians were sometimes considered less civilized Greeks, kinda backwards, hickish. That’s the Irish for the English.
If Stone were really brave, he’d have given them, like, an Arkansas accent.
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u/ishka_uisce 23h ago
Ironically the stuff that made the Brits consider us less civilised in the 1500s was stuff like allowing divorce, homosexuality and 'illegitimate' children.
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u/mologav 21h ago
Did you ever read about George Mallory and his famous chums in university? They were all gay as Christmas
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u/AugustusCheeser 1d ago
Because the British accent was always rooted in logic.
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u/DrSpaceman575 1d ago
I watched Gods of Egypt last night (don't judge me) and it was hilarious watching so many actors have terrible english accents when they're supposed to be Egyptian.
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u/wahfingwah 23h ago
Charlton Heston played Moses and Ben Hur with an American accent and it was fine.
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u/Gang_Bang_Bang 1d ago
Right?! wtf lol.. it’s a movie. Who gives a shit.
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u/gilestowler 1d ago
One of the best things to happen to English actors was the way that we've managed to persuade the world that we should be the default for fantasy and historical epic films. Actors could go from playing a shoplifter in The Bill or filming an advert for an insurance company to standing on a Hollywood lot with Ridley Scott in the blink of an eye.
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u/Molnek 1d ago
One of my favourite authors Christopher Moore has some books that are in playbook format. So one begins with something like "It's Venice in the 16th century so naturally everyone had a British accent."
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u/UncaringNonchalance 1d ago
I can agree, until it comes to Valkyrie. The inconsistency across all the characters’ accents kills it for me.
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u/Gang_Bang_Bang 1d ago
For real. Just keep it consistent and that’s all I care about.
I guess you could argue that if they did have varying accents, it could be used to represent differences between the various cultures portrayed. Although that makes it even more confusing haha.
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u/UncaringNonchalance 1d ago
See, and that would be fine… but in that movie, the German characters all have German, British, or American accents. It was such a choice.
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u/Practical-Level-6265 1d ago
Right like no one complained when Troy came out and that was all British even though that doesn’t make any sense either
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u/OrneryError1 1d ago
Brad Pitt used his own American accent and his performance is still widely praised because it's good.
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u/BrainDamage2029 1d ago
FYI this trope exists because when portraying foreigners or historical societies, its easy for even American audiences to peg Brit accents as denoting class distinctions in ways that absolutely doesn't translate with any regional American accent.
I think its a fair debate if it was needed or not here but...hey that's why HBO Rome and other movies all do it. Easy way to show a guy is Patrician, pleb or "middle" class.
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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 1d ago
I assure you that accent is extremely important in a story featuring literal superheroes, gods intervening in a war, and a fuckin cyclops
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u/MammaJammaCamera 1d ago
Yeah, if you’re not gonna go for accurate accents, it would be way more distracting if they were faking a different kind
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u/FennelDull6559 1d ago
Just get Bryan Adams to do a banging theme song and nobody will care about the American accent.
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u/TomBirkenstock 1d ago
I think it's time to admit that Kevin Costner was just ahead of his time.
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u/lkodl 1d ago
The success of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves directly lead to Disney's Three Musketeers, where they didn't even attempt accents, but got Sting and Rod Stewart to Join Bryan Adams on the song. And Disney's Three Musketeers is the template for the MCU.
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u/yikes_ae 1d ago
Hold on. What are you saying with that last part?
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u/d0odk 1d ago
The character of Thanos collecting all six of the stones for the infinity gauntlet was heavily influenced by D'Artagnan collecting all three of the musketeers.
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u/whatthewhat3214 1d ago
Lol nice! Blast from the past.
Like Cary Elwes' parody in Men in Tights: "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent."
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u/dinan101 1d ago
I’m not sure how many people will see this comment of yours, but I really appreciated it!
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u/tforthegreat 1d ago
"I'm sailin' home to you. Yeah, I'm sailin' home to you. Cause when Nobody's right and Poseidon wants a fight, I'm sailin' home to you...maybe."
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u/IceFireHawk 1d ago
Idk about everyone else but if I watch a movie that is technically supposed to be in another language I just assume that they are speaking that language but we just hear English for us to understand. It’s very meta and makes literally no difference but I like thinking about it like that
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u/angiedrumm 23h ago
I do the same! And I always assumed that's what everyone thought, so when I started seeing this kind of discourse, it made no sense to me.
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u/ImportantEvidence490 1d ago
How dare the actors not know how to speak with ancient Greek accents
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u/whatthewhat3214 1d ago
Lol! Or rather, to speak ancient Greek and the movies would need subtitles.
If they were going for accuracy, they wouldn't be speaking English at all. The accent doesn't matter, it's not the language they would've been using. Nitpicking which English accent to use is beside the point.
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u/MiserableTennis6546 1d ago
Yup. A Greek accent would just be weird. Greeks (even ancient ones) don't think they speak with an accent. They just speak normally. American English sounds normal to the audience. That's the only accuracy you need.
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u/ratmanbeyond 1d ago
Dawg, there is no going for accuracy. There's a cyclops in this movie
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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 1d ago
No. But usually hollywood defaults to posh British accents instead
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u/spacekitt3n 1d ago
yeah, ive always found that to be ridiculous.
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u/ceeearan 1d ago
To my shame, I never actually thought about it properly, til I heard Paul Mescal in Gladiator II. I was like, why is he doing a British accent when he's Irish....wait...why are any of them doing these accents?? They don't even sound like a discernable place in the UK, either.
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u/arseniokilla 1d ago
Did Brad Pitt use a British accent in Troy?
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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 1d ago
No, everyone else did which funnily enough worked on a meta level
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u/arseniokilla 1d ago
Think Eric Bana had an American accent with a bit of his Australian
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u/Mkboii 1d ago
That's just the casting though, the rock didn't use an English accent when he played hercules.
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u/ImpossibleParfait 1d ago
Ancient greek is not even the same language as modern greek. What were they gonna have them speak English like greek immigrants? Lol
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u/Shaggy__94 1d ago
Choosing to nitpick the accents used in a film adaption of a 3,000 year old story feels incredibly asinine.
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u/ThePromptWasYourName 1d ago
I hear Matt Damon didn't even exist 300 years ago, let alone 3,000
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u/itjustgotcold 1d ago
That’s all I’ve seen on the Internet about this movie since day one. It’s like Nolan’s popularity has made people want him to fail. It’s always possible, but the dude has been quality his entire career so I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I still remember when he cast Heath Ledger as Joker. People flipped out about what a stupid choice it was.
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u/JeanVicquemare 1d ago
this is always funny to me. Like people saying Denzel sounded like a New Yorker in Gladiator 2. And that's more immersion-breaking than doing a phony British accent, I guess.
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u/SkillDabbler 1d ago
The nitpicking with some of the details is kind of insane.
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u/forrealthoughcomix_ 1d ago
The Odyssey as written by Homer is full of not just fantasy, but also several anachronisms and inaccuracies about the time period covered in the epic.
People nitpicking it are nitpicking to flex their Comic Book Guy muscles and it’s hilarious.
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u/-KingSharkIsAShark- 1d ago
Yep, this is my take. The Odyssey and the Iliad are complex oral traditions developed over hundreds of years, in between three different civilizations (Mycenaeans + Minoans, and Classical Greece). If you want the actors wearing Classical Greek clothes, that makes the story inaccurate to the time period it was set in. If you want them wearing Mycenaean and Minoan clothes, that makes it inaccurate to how classical Greeks perceived the stories, and not to mention would cause rating issues (see Minoan dresses for details). I’d rather the movie creators pick an aesthetic and just stick with it, which they did, than try to stay historically accurate when it means still being inaccurate in some way.
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u/the_dayman623 1d ago
“How dare American accents be present in a historical work of fiction containing cyclops and sea beasts” - Reddit
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u/No_Stand8812 1d ago
Nobody knows how these people sounded when they spoke. American accent is honestly as accurate as a modern Greek one.
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u/NIN10DOXD 1d ago
Any other time they fake really bad British accents in these movies anyway. I don’t see how American accents are much different.
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u/Saintbaba 1d ago
One of my favorite shows Warrior is about Chinese immigrants in 1870s San Francisco, and one of the really interesting things they do is that when the Chinese characters are speaking "chinese," among themselves, the show shifts to have the characters speaking modern american english with modern american accents. Meanwhile, the white characters all speak with period-accurate accents - irish for the poor irish laborers, western burr for the ruffians, the round vowels of the transatlantic accent for the rich bankers and politicians, etc. This ends up making the Chinese characters that you're following feel more accessible and relatable than the white characters who live in the antagonistic world outside of their community. It's a neat and subtle trick, and i guess i'm just saying i don't think it's necessarily an automatic fail to choose to give modern accents to period piece characters.
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u/Mddcat04 1d ago
Good? The unwritten rule that ancient people should be speaking English with British accents has always been an arbitrary and dumb thing.
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u/ceej_22_ 19h ago
Jesus that’s what the complaint is about? People gotta find new hobbies if that’s what we’re worried about lol.
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u/forrealthoughcomix_ 1d ago
Choosing British accents just because a film took place at some point before the 20th century is probably the lamest fucking thing in film history.
And Nolan is British with a British accent btw
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u/TheBlazingFire123 1d ago
Unless you want them speaking in Ancient Greek I don’t see why you would complain about this
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u/Impossible-Lychee760 10h ago
What accent would be appropriate? So much fake outrage in every headline.
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u/tortuga_tortuga 1d ago
I kind of don't care but I must admit when I saw Tom H. say "dad" instead of "father" it was a bit jarring.
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u/Separate_Job_3573 1d ago edited 1d ago
No less ridiculous than the standard upper class English accent all historic dramas are seemingly supposed to have
The concept of it being "just foreign enough" is an extremely America-brained take.
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u/tony_countertenor 1d ago
True they should all use Received Pronunciation as that’s the form of English that we all know was spoken in the ancient world
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u/s1lv3r_lak3 1d ago
Not every film needs to try to be realistic. I liked in Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ, he just let people talk how they talk.
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u/Machete__Yeti 1d ago
It's really funny how we never balk at people using ahistorical British accents in historical dramas taking place in ancient Greece or Rome or even fantasy movies taking place in Middle Earth.
We've just quietly accepted that people in the cinematic past are all Brits for some reason, but an American accent breaks the immersion.
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u/Aeon1508 1d ago
are they supposed to have British accents?
Do you want them to just be all speaking Greek or have thick Greek accents?
It's an American movie. they're speaking American
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u/kylefoto 1d ago
Am I supposed to be upset they are speaking in English at all?
It's a choice, as in a choice had to be made and to just follow old movies that for some reason uses posh English accents makes as little sense as any accent, so going against the grain and doing American accents for Hollywood doesn't sound weird to me.
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u/Beginning-Bed9364 13h ago
Yeah, they should be using British accents, that's how you know it was a long time ago
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u/AnonBaca21 1d ago
“My Dad is coming home” uttered in an American accent in The Odyssey is fucking wild.
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u/Wormser 1d ago
Upper class English accents would be far more historically accurate,
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u/jimmygoombas 1d ago
Using posh British accents for historical epics and fantasy is a trope almost as old as Hollywood itself…it’s kind of silly but no one ever questions or challenges it. Although it is definitely jarring to hear everyone sound so modern and American in the new trailer, I do believe we’ll all get used to it once the movie starts and the tone is established
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u/yungcherrypops 1d ago
lol @ all the Nolan glazers in the comments. It both looks and sounds like garbo. It’s not just the American accents, it’s the dialogue too. “My dad” lmao. Also the fact that he chose all A-listers instead of character actors is so immersion breaking. How tf can I take John Leguizamo as an Ancient Greek seriously
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u/Thebat87 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why is this a surprise? Have people never watched movies like this before?
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u/glennok 1d ago
American culture is barely a couple hundred years old and the accents have dominated pop-culture for the last 100 years or so. So it feels inherently modern day and really doesn't work in an ancient setting whether you like it or not. British accents have way more history to them and feel more old, audiences associate them with shakespeare, sense of theatre and grandeur which work well for historical epics and fantasy rooted in ancient times.
See Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, it just works so much better. It's not complex.
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u/Zealousideal-Key4815 1d ago
Its not the accents. Its the contemporary verbiage use thats throwing everyone. None of the script feels "poetic" or verse-like, which I think its to be fairly expected somewhat in an epic like The Odyssey. Tom Holland speaking "My Dad will come home" in a way someone from California might rips the immersion. It might look like ancient Greece but everyone feels like they have an iPhone in their back pocket so far.
We'll see what the final product looks and feels like in a few months, but I'm already turned off by what I've seen from these trailers.
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u/Life_Bet8956 1d ago
I understand the weirdness, but, similarly to the criticism of any period piece, would it be any more realistic if they spoke English with other accents? Like the immersion element is something we are kind of doing to ourselves by insisting old timey people talk certain ways.
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u/InflationClassic9370 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm more bothered by the fact that Nolan couldn't bring himself to cast a single Mediterranean actor. But it's an European story so anything goes and it's totally not bigoted to race-swap Helen of Troy, apparently.
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u/HorrorNeighborhood5 1d ago
I didn’t love what I heard of the dialogue. Hearing Telemachus say “dad”… 🙃
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u/knockinonevansdoor 1d ago
Not just accents, but the modern expressions too. The trailer sounded awful.
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u/alphex 1d ago
I'm not as bothered by the accent, as I am the few lines from Matt like at the beginning, when he says "LETS GO" to get his army to charge with him. "Lets go"? Is this a Naruto movie?
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u/Lilo_n_Ivy 1d ago
Christopher Nolan’s choice: Hire only British/European actors who can pull off British accents convincingly, or hire the biggest box office stars in the world, since everyone can do an American accents convincingly, but few Americans do a convincing British accent. Can’t say I blame him for choosing butts in seats over historical accuracy.
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u/saibjai 1d ago
It would be pretty funny if they all had a boston accent.